Baby Weaning – When is it Most Appropriate?
By Stella Mak

It is generally most appropriate to start baby weaning to solid food when your baby is around 6 months old. The reason for this is that most babies will have doubled in bodyweight so they will be ready for some solid food. However, if you have a very small baby, you might want to wait till your baby has grown a bit bigger.

You can also see changes in your baby’s development at around this period whereby their mouth will start to change so that they can cope with solid foods. From birth till now, your baby’s digestive system is only able to cope with breast milk or baby formula consumption. As such, the process of baby weaning has to be done gradually.

When your baby is 6 months old, you can start baby weaning by introducing soft solid food. You should not delay solid foods introduction for too long as it can hinder your baby’s ability to swallow solid foods and your baby might also not want to try other food except milk by then. Most babies are very curious to what you are eating and want to try as well when they are between the age of 6 to 10 months. If you were to wait till your baby is past one year old, they might not be willing to accept it. Besides, milk will not be sufficient to keep them full throughout the day and night if you do not feed them with solid foods.

When your baby is still in the early stages after his birth, breast milk or milk formula itself is sufficient to give him nutrition for his proper development. However, this balanced nutrition has to be balanced up with solid foods, thus you have to introduce a variety of nutritious foods into your baby’s new diet. This will help to maintain your baby’s healthy nutritional requirements.

With the introduction of solid foods into your baby’s diet, it will also mean that there will be additional cost to your budget. You will have to buy bowls, spoons as well as other utensils that are suitable for feeding your baby. Most of these items are not very expensive so you can shop for a good budget price.

To make life easier for you, you can invest in a food processor whereby the food that you want to feed to your baby can be blended into much softer substances so that it is easier for your baby to digest. Fortunately, such food processors are not very expensive nowadays so you might want to really consider getting one.

Make sure the solid food feed to your baby is not hard. In fact, cereal is a good choice but it depends on your baby as some babies can develop allergy towards cereals, so you should not introduce more than one type of food each day in order to keep track of which food is causing the allergy if any.

When you first start on baby weaning, you can do it once a day. Just feed a small amount to your baby to see if he likes the taste and whether he develops any allergy to it. Your baby’s milk consumption will still stay the same throughout this period till he is about one year old when he might demand more solid food and less of milk as solid foods can keep him full for a longer period.

Stella Mak is a qualified school teacher with over 18 years of experience and she is also the mother of a pair of twins. She runs an informative blog that covers tips related to baby advice at http://www.babyadvice.expertreviewslist.com To take advantage of this useful information as well as to get her free newsletter, make sure you check out Stella’s blog. Also, find out how to wean your baby smoothly and naturally at her website http://www.childrenproblemshelpdesk.com/babyweaning.html

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